The freedomways are crawling
with unseen strait-jacket lemmings
commuting from their hovels
or their houses on the hill
they couldn't march off of,
not without the titanic television
not without the whisky to swill

Mammalian master of the chemical,
we've conquered tiger and jackal
to make planet Earth
our Naked Ape Garden
where we smell the candy sweet scent
of our vast sky-scraper blossoms;
we eat intellectual apples
throughout the once possum-ruled night
now fertile territory of electric light,
the hanging beast relegated
to parks in the forgotten countryside
while city universities educate untold masses
teaching every Baker and Mason
the minutiae of Kant and Schopenhauer...
lessons they'll recall as old folks
in the gravity-free canyons of the moon
with the red mountains of Mars
the challenge coming soon

Till then,
we bide our time...
we make babies, smart phones
or rhymes...
some few of us escape
our straight-arrow strait-jackets
and see the world with new-wizened eyes